Apple, Google, Facebook don't pay the highest engineer salary

For software engineers, life must seem like it keeps getting better. Not only are salaries on the rise as companies compete for talent, but there are also lively job markets in cities across the US.

While big-name companies, like Google, Apple, and Facebook, tout their engineers as the best and the brightest, these tech giants aren't necessarily paying the most (although they're up there).

A new survey by Glassdoor, released Thursday, lists the top 25 companies that have paid their engineers the highest salaries over the last year. And the unlikely winner is Juniper Networks. Paying $159,990 for its software engineers' average base salary, Juniper is way ahead of other companies on the list.

Coming in No. 2 is LinkedIn, which pays its software engineers $136,427, and No. 3 is Yahoo paying $130,312. Google and Twitter make up No. 4 and No. 5 on the list, respectively, paying $127,143 and $124,863. Apple is No. 6, and Facebook is No. 9.

While people may balk that some of the heavy hitters aren't reaching the top of the list, it's important to note that all of the companies in the top 25 pay above the national annual average, which is $92,790.

These 2013 salaries are quite a bit higher than the numbers released by Glassdoor last year. In 2012, Google earned the top spot, paying its engineers $128,336 (which is actually $1,193 more than this year). Coming in second was Facebook paying $123,626.

Third and fourth place went to Apple and eBay last year. While they dropped in the rankings, both companies are paying more this year than last year -- Apple is paying $10,217 more, and eBay is paying $5,911 more. Zynga, which was No. 5 last year, didn't even make the top 25 list this year.

In this year's survey, Glassdoor also took a look at the average software engineer salary in major cities across the US. Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Bay Area ranks No. 1 with the average base pay at $111,885. A couple of other cities, like Seattle and San Diego, also have above average salaries.

Glassdoor's survey is based on companies that had at least 50 software engineer salary reports filed over the last 12 months. In all, more than 33,000 salary reports were turned into Glassdoor this year.